Female students protest discriminatory shorts ban in school

A protest against a ban on high school girls wearing shorts to class is growing, with hundreds of students wearing the prohibited items and being sent home, the Ynet news site reports.

On Sunday, the first day back at school, several girls in one Tel Aviv-area school were sent home for wearing shorts. On Wednesday, schools across the country see protests by shorts-sporting girls in high schools and middle schools demanding equality in dress, especially during a sweltering heat wave.

“Why let him in, he’s wearing the same shorts,” students in Modiin call out. (It sounds better in Hebrew).

עכשיו זו כבר מחאה מאורגנת מראש. תלמידות עירוני ה' במודיעין נשארו מחוץ לבית הספר אחרי שבאו במכנסיים קצרים הבנים כן נכנסו
"למה הוא נכנס יש לנו אותו מכנס" קראו התלמידות pic.twitter.com/I5Rlwtbsg4

— לירן כוג'הינוף (@lirankog) May 20, 2020

The protests, coupled with an affair in which a young girl was made to stay in school in her underwear rather than wear a sleeveless dress, has brought the dress code issue to the fore.

Appearing to back the protest, Meretz party leader Nitzan Horowitz says on Twitter that “this is coercion of girls only, due to a view of women needing to be more ‘modest.’ Why? This all comes from deep discrimination against women. Hegemony and control.”